Affairs in Prussia.
[—Prussia, France and Italy]

Berlin, September 27, 1860

The Prince Regent[a] who, as I have already told your readers, since his accession to supreme power, is a sullen and dogged Legitimist at the core of his heart, despite the gaudy insignia of liberalism he has been decked out with by the official oracles of the Prussian fool's paradise, has just caught an occasion of publicly giving vent to his long compressed feelings. It is a strange fact, but nevertheless it is a fact, that the Prince Regent of Prussia has for the nonce shut out the Garibaldians from the fortress of Messina, and saved that important military stronghold for his beloved brother, King Bombalino[b] of Naples. The Prussian Ambassador at Naples, Count of Perponcher, a personage as notorious for his staunch Legitimism as Baron of Canitz, the Prussian Ambassador at Rome, had, like most of his colleagues, followed King Bombalino to Gaeta, where the Prussian war corvette Loreley was placed for the protection of German subjects. Now on the 15th of September, the citadel of Messina was on the point of capitulating. The officers had declared for Victor Emmanuel, and sent a deputation to Gaeta in order to tell the King that the place was no longer tenable. On the following day that deputation was shipped back to Messina by the war corvette Loreley, with a Prussian Commissary on board, who, on the arrival of the vessel, proceeded immediately to the citadel, where he had a long conversation with the Neapolitan commander. Beside his personal eloquence, the Prussian agent exhibited a bundle of dispatches on the part of the King, encouraging the General to resistance, and strongly inveighing against every proposition of giving up, even under the most favorable conditions, the forts still sufficiently provisioned for several months. During the stay of the Prussian Commissary, cries of "Evviva it Re!"[c] were heard ringing from the citadel, and when he left, the transactions entered into, with a view to stipulate the terms of the capitulation, were at once broken off. On the arrival of this news, Count Cavour hastened to lodge a complaint at Berlin because of "the abuse of the Prussian flag," and the violation of the promise to preserve perfect neutrality in the revolutionary war of Italy. Despite the justness of the complaint, Count Cavour of all men was the man least fitted to prefer it. Herr von Schleinitz, whose dispatches had, during the war of 1859[346], obtained some notoriety for their soft-sawder style, their seesaw reasonings, and the incomparable art of drawing out the thread of their verbosity finer than the staple of their argument—Herr von Schleinitz eagerly improved the opportunity to insinuate himself with the Prince Regent, and to change for once his humble sotto voce[d] for the shrill tones of haughtiness. He administered a peremptory rebuke to Count Cavour, who was-plainly told that Sicily had not yet become a Sardinian province, that the treaty obligations were daily violated by the Court of Turin, and that if Cavour wanted to protest against foreign intervention in Italy, he had better lodge his protest at the Tuileries.

The withdrawal of the French Embassador from Turin is here considered a transparent dodge, since it is perfectly known that immediately after the meeting at Chambéry between Louis Bonaparte and Messrs. Farini and Cialdini, the latter was intrusted with the command of the Piedmontese invasion of the Papal States. That invasion was planned at Chambéry with a view to taking the game out of the hands of Garibaldi and replacing it into the hands of Cavour, the French Emperor's most pliant servant. The revolutionary war in Southern Italy is known to be considered at the Tuileries not as a fortuitous avalanche of a ball once set rolling, but as the deliberate act of the independent Italian party who, ever since Louis Napoleon's ingress of the via sacra[347] had proclaimed the rising of the South as the only means of taking off the nightmare of French protection. In point of fact, Mazzini in his proclamation to the Italian people, dated May 16, 1859, stated plainly:

"With due reserve the people of the North may rally round the banners of Victor Emmanuel, wherever the Austrian is encamped or neighboring; the insurrection of the South must take a different and more independent course. Rising, rising united, installing a Provisional Government, arming, selecting a strategical point where it may keep its ground and attract the volunteers of the North, Naples and Sicily may still save the cause of Italy, and constitute its power, represented by a national camp. Thanks to that camp and the Northern volunteers, Italy, at the end of the war, whatever be the intentions of its initiators, may still become the supreme arbiter of its own destinies.... Such a popular manifestation would exclude every new division of Italy, every importation of new dynasties, every peace of the Adige or the Mincio, every abandonment of every part of the Italian soil. And the name of Rome is inseparable from the name of Italy. There, in the sacred city, stands the palladium of our national unity. It is the duty of Rome not to swell the Sardinian army by a mob of volunteers, but to prove to Imperial France that the prop of the Papal despotism at Rome will never be acknowledged the sword-bearer of Italian independence.... If Rome forgets its duties, we must act for the Romans. Rome represents the unity of the fatherland. Sicily, Naples, and the volunteers of the North must constitute its army."

Such were the words of Mazzini in May, 1859, reechoed by Garibaldi[e] when, at the head of the popular army created in Sicily and Naples, he promised to proclaim the Unity of Italy from the top of the Quirinal.[348]

You will remember how Cavour, from the beginning, did everything in his power to beset Garibaldi's expedition with difficulties; how, after the first success won by the popular hero, he sent La Farina, in company with two Bonapartist agents, over to Palermo, in order to deprive the conqueror of his dictatorship; how, later on, every military move of Garibaldi was met, on the part of Cavour, first by diplomatic and at last by military countermoves[f]. After the fall of Palermo and the progress to Messina, Garibaldi's popularity towered so high among the people and the army of Paris, that Louis Napoleon considered it prudent to try the wheedling method. When Gen. Türr, at that time disabled from active service, had repaired to Paris, he became quite overwhelmed with Imperial flatteries. He was not only an honored guest at the Palais Royal, but was even admitted to the Tuileries[349], initiated into the Emperor's unbounded enthusiasm for his "annexed" subject, the Nizzard hero, and laden with tokens of good will, such as rifled cannon, and so forth. At the same time Türr's mind was impressed with the Emperor's conviction that Garibaldi, after he had made sure of Naples and the Neapolitan Navy, could do nothing better than to try, in unison with the Hungarian refugees, a landing at Fiume, there to plant the banner of a Hungarian revolution. But Louis Napoleon proceeded from altogether false premises when he supposed that Türr was the man, or even fancied himself to be the man, to exercise the least control over Garibaldi's course of action. Türr, whom I know personally, is a brave soldier and an intelligent officer, but beyond the sphere of military activity he is a mere zero, below the average of common mortals, lacking not only training of mind and a cultivated intellect, but that natural shrewdness and instinct which may stand in place of education, learning, and experience. He is, in one word, an easy-going jolly good fellow, gifted with an extraordinary degree of credulity, but certainly not the man to politically control anybody, not to speak of Garibaldi, who, with a fire of soul, still owns his grain of that subtle Italian genius you may trace in Dante no less than in Machiavelli. Türr, then, having proved a miscalculation, such at least he is spoken of in the entourage of the Tuileries. Kossuth was tried and dispatched to Garibaldi to bring him round to the views of the Emperor, and to bring him off his true scent, which points to Rome. Garibaldi used Kossuth as a means of stirring the revolutionary enthusiasm, and had him consequently feasted with popular ovations, but knew wisely how to distinguish between his name, representing a popular cause, and his mission, hiding a Bonapartist snare. Kossuth returned to Paris quite chopfallen; but, to give an earnest of his fidelity to the Imperialist interests, has now, as reported by the Opinion nationale, the Plon-Plon Moniteur, addressed a letter to Garibaldi, wherein he calls upon the latter to conciliate himself with Cavour, to abstain from every attempt at Rome, in order to not estrange France, the true hope of the oppressed nationalities, and even to let Hungary alone, the latter country being not yet ripe for an insurrection.

I need not tell you that here, at Berlin, the shares of ministerial liberalism have experienced a heavy fall, consequent upon the impending Warsaw Congress; where, not only the rulers by the grace of God are to shake hands, but their respective Ministers of Foreign Affairs: Prince Gorchakoff, Count Rechberg, and our own Herr von Schleinitz, are to meet in the snug corner of a gilded antechamber, there to give an orthodox turn to the coming history of mankind.

The transactions of Prussia with Austria, as to a new commercial treaty between the Zollverein and Austria, such as foreshadowed by the treaty of February 19, 1853,[350] may now be considered to be broken off, since the Prussian Cabinet has positively declared that any assimilation, or even approximation of tariffs was out of the question.

Notes